How-To: Open OneNote Class Notebook in the OneNote App

Last night, I was asked via the #PBSDigitalInnovators chat to reflect on one tool that was particularly impactful last year. My favorite tool of 2015 was OneNote Class Notebooks. I wish these were available when we first started! While Microsoft’s initial support for OneNote on the Mac was a modest (at best) attempt, there is a growing effort to provide “parity” with OneNote on Windows. That is to say they are bringing more features and more support to the OneNote software available in the Mac/OSX App Store. One of the latest developments, adding voice notes, is of particular interest to teachers of world languages who want to assess oral fluency (more on that later).

Documentation for the Mac version has also been lacking from Microsoft. Most Class Notebook videos, interactive trainings and how-to are very PC-focused, but I’ve developed a YouTube playlist and documentation like that below to help teachers and students through in-class use. This document summarizes the how-to steps to get OneNote Online notebooks syncing with the OneNote for Mac software, which is harder than it should be from a design perspective. These steps took me about 15 minutes in-class to guide students through. Really, the hardest part if helping them remember their passwords!